About the work of...Kara Walker

Activity

Great artists, plain and simple. September 2025

General public

6 September 2025

On the occasion of the closing of the exhibition "Kara Walker. Burning Village", we have scheduled a series of activities around her work.

One of them is our monthly session of "Great Artists Straight Up" which, as it could not be otherwise, this Saturday will be dedicated to her figure.

Information

Opening hours: 12:00 hours
Type of activity: Mediation, Art and Artists, Guided visit
Modality: At the museum

Related exhibition

Kara Walker. Burning Village

28.02.2025 - 07.09.2025

The MACA presents the largest Kara Walker exhibition held to date in Spain. The exhibition, which can be visited until September 7, is curated by Rosa Castells, and offers a journey through her trajectory over the last four decades. Kara Walker is one of the most prominent artists of her generation and one of the most interesting figures in the international art scene, with a complex body of work that analyzes, in sometimes chaotic scenes, issues of race, identity, power and desire used always as systems of oppression and subjugation, across centuries and continents.The exhibition brings together the numerous works by Kara Walker present in the Michael Jenkins and Javier Romero collection at the MACA. It consists of 44 pieces that cover part of her trajectory and constitute one of the most complete sets of the artist's work existing in European institutions. Here are displayed drawings, prints, sculptures, artist books and one of her most recent videos, a total of 31 works donated in ownership to the MACA in 2021 and 13 pieces deposited in 2024 for this exhibition that have traveled from New York. Her work addresses themes of violence, identity, race and sexuality in the context of the still-present psychological wound caused by the tragic legacy of slavery, presenting a critical vision of the historical past and examining racial and gender stereotypes in our current society.Known for her work of paper-cut silhouettes, inspired by the historical tradition of Victorian shadow portraits, shadow theater or magic lanterns, Walker uses, in works of great formal beauty, the language of satire and archetypes to reveal the contradictions of the concept a nation has of itself, while casting a very lucid subversive gaze on the historical-artistic allusions that influence her works.Through drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video and installation, the artist explores the representation of the notion of race in modern and contemporary art, as well as the need to establish new narratives that challenge the way we look at and understand history. The images in Walker's work, drawn from both historical realism and the fantastical space of the imagined, seduce through their emotional rawness, the intellectual force they contain and their extraordinary visual beauty.

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Related activities

Program to which it belongs

Great artists, plain and simple

General public , 22.01.2022 - 19.12.2026

Workshop visit with vermouth around the work of female artists from the collections. Guided tour by ExplicarteTraditionally, women have been considered second-class citizens in the world of culture. This position was based on a statistic supported by a very limited number of women who had stood out in the field of literature, thought, and the plastic arts. This idea crumbles in the face of a simple consideration, and that is the reduced opportunities they had to develop their personal talents.

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